They are Leopard Trek! And they are awesome! And I really really hope they win the Tour this year, because who likes Contador? (Shockingly, we still don’t.)

Here is Leopard Shleck’s (Am I the first to do that? I hope so.) website. Not a lot there, yet, but I’m sure there will be. And maybe the official Twitter feed will be slightly more literate (if far less endearing) than those of the various members.

Like this:

I hate the “midnight” green uniforms. I didn’t grow up with them, they’re going to look really dated around, oh, yesterday, and they are mostly just terrible. They don’t look real.

Well, finally, the front office have realized that a change might be nice–and that maybe the change we want is not necessarily one that makes us look like the Rams. So, on September 12th, the Eagles will face the Packers, and they will wear kelly green. Like football players.

Like this:

Because I really took out after Rafael Nadal for last year’s Australian Open ensemble, and because I’m so sure that he really cares about my approval and it will make him feel just so much better:

This year’s was awesome.

The orange is great. The pink stripe is even great. The narrow stripes grip me less, but the white panels and everything are just excellent.

Also: the shorts. Last year’s had stupid dots, which were hateful. This year’s are plaid, which is amazing.

Now, on anyone else, this would look absurd. They have not got Mr. Nadal’s complexion nor his amount of awesome. But that’s not really the point. It’s not on anyone else, and it does look terrific, and I am pretty cut up I won’t have another chance to talk about it.

Like this:

Everyone makes fun of the Creamsicle Buccaneers uniforms and Bucco Bruce. This is stupid. Those uniforms are fantastic. I mean, have you looked at the current Tampa uniforms? Their colors are scary El Greco red and “pewter,” by which they mean “the color you get when you eat a bunch of vaguely silverish paint and then are spectacularly sick because paint isn’t good for you.” At least Creamsicles are delicious. And their skull-and-swords logo is already starting to look dated, and was never good. At least Bucco Bruce was excellently absurd, and not merely lazy. (As a side note: would Bucco Bruce have been an easier sell if Pirates of the Caribbean had come out decades earlier? Or do those markets overlap less than I thought?)

That logo, by the way, is representative of an unfortunate trend in sporting iconography that’s going to look really stupid in about ten years. In the same class are the current logos of: the Denver Broncos (what was wrong with a whole horse?), the Philadelphia Eagles (that bird looks like nothing on earth), the Tennessee Titans (seriously, what is that even supposed to be?), the New England Patriots (who knew that tricornes had comet trails?), and the Carolina Panthers. They look really swish and cybercool now, but, um, so did RoboCop.

The fiftieth anniversary AFL throwbacks have made this–sartorially–a season of unmitigated joy. The Titans make me miss the Oilers even more. The Bills look great. So do the Pats. The referees are amazingly orange.

Football players shouldn’t look space-age. They should look like football players. The NFL should not remind you of the time you watched Starship Troopers. This is part of why it’s sometimes nice to watch the Browns. Or maybe this is the only reason it’s nice to watch the Browns. Their uniforms look pretty much like their throwbacks; the colors are “orange” and “brown,” and there are natty stripes on the sleeves and socks. This is excellent.

Like this:

Look, we all know that golf is one of the last bastions of deliberately hideous clothing. Golf, and my croquet parties. But I digress. I respect golfers who, from mere cussedness, turn up looking deranged. I prefer tartan or at least intelligible patterns, but I’m not really that picky.

If you’re going to wear hideous trousers, can’t you at least have the guts to go the whole hog and make them plus-fours? At least then you can plead authenticity.

Here, I will spare you the clown trousers John Daly wore on the practice round. Seriously, clown trousers.

Like this:

Apparently some people do, though. In Montreal, at the Rogers Cup, they had a fashion show, and they sent Mr. Djokovic out in a dressing gown.

I don't really have words.

I have to admit, when I first saw this photo, and had no idea there had been a fashion show at which Mr. Djokovic had modelled choices for the boudoir (and, seriously, how was I supposed to guess that?), I thought he had shown up in dinner dress but without a shirt. Because apparently I dislike him that much. Yikes.

Like this:

He’s complaining about pre-fabricated championship gear. You know, the reason that there are apparently starving children somewhere who think that the Philadelphia Eagles have ever won a Super Bowl.

He also points out Roger Federer’s most recent Wimbledon title, and its attendant “15” sweater, as a “rare show of classlessness from a normally classy guy.” He’s right. Kit and I sat in front of the television, our Pimm’s Cup clutched in disbelieving hands, as Andy Roddick took the interview tastefulness title with flying colors. In some ways, a “14” sweater a few weeks earlier would have been much less disappointing–he would have been carrying it for months, and it would be sort of a joke at the Roland Garros final. That would have been cute and hilarious instead of looking like swank.

The worst thing about the sweater is not its tackiness. The worst thing is its predictability. Not that Mr. Federer did it, but that it happened at all. The contemporary obsession with pointless, tacky ephemera is to blame. I have an NFC Championship t-shirt. Why? What is the possible point? Why are people suckers?

The legend lives in the name on the board, not the sweater. It’s the trophy that matters, not the ugly baseball cap.

And, seriously, does Alberto Contador have a whole room in his house full of stuffed lions?